BVOV Magazine 2013 - present

Miss Bryant’s show was scheduled for the following year. Meanwhile, Jesse continued playing clubs in the evening, but with his days free that summer, he took a day job as a lifeguard. He also had lots of time for girls. His Future Bride “I want you to see this girl I like,” Jesse’s friend, Matt, told him one day while at the pool. “She’s in the dressing room with her four sisters. I’ll point her out to you when they come out.” A few minutes later, the Carrere sisters stepped from the dressing room, and Matt pointed to the third sister. “That’s her!” he said. “Her name is Cathy. What do you think?” “She’s too skinny,” Jesse said. Jesse did like Cathy’s sister, Deborah, though, and asked her out. They had dated occasionally, when Deborah told Jesse she had agreed to go steady with someone else. “That’s OK, who else is around there?” Jesse asked during a telephone conversation. “Cathy’s here,” Deborah answered. “Put her on!” “Cathy had just turned 16 when I asked her out,” Jesse recalled. “I usually tried to keep all girls away from my mother because she was likely to call them Jezebel or Delilah. Once, Cathy and I were on a date when I realized I had forgotten my money. Back home, I introduced Cathy to my mother. Mama didn’t call her names, but she made me furious.” “She’s the one!” Jesse’s mother had said. “What are you talking about, Mama?” “She’s the one you’re gonna marry!” “I’m not going to marry the girl, Mama! I’m just dating her!” “I done heard from God!” “Will you stop it with the God stuff?” She wouldn’t. Jesse was 21, and Cathy was 17 when they married in 1970. Three days later, they packed their car to move to Dallas. Cathy’s mother, who wasn’t very fond of Jesse, followed her daughter outside to say goodbye. “Honey,” she said, “just remember, you can always leave that trash.” “There was no love lost between Cathy’s mother and me in those days,” Jesse said. “Neither of us knew the Lord, and there wasn’t much we agreed on. She would have been surprised to know that I agreed with her about the difference between Cathy and me. “As far as I was concerned, Cathy was pure and I was trash. I had no illusions about myself. Cathy was like a China doll to me—beautiful and good. I needed her because she was the opposite of who I had become,” Jesse recalled. “I tried to live a divided life. I had my professional life, which included all the drugs and alcohol I could handle. But I tried to protect Cathy from that part of my life. “She didn’t know I was an alcoholic or drug user when we married, but it didn’t take long for her to realize things weren’t what they seemed...I was drinking a fifth of whiskey a day.” In spite of that, Jesse’s stage name, Jerry Jaxon, had become a common sight on marquees. The William Morrison Agency was booking him for shows all over the country. And his income jumped from $1300 to $13,000 a week. Change on the Way In Jesse’s eyes, he had it all. Then something happened that would change his life forever. On Oct. 25, 1971, Jesse’s daughter, Jodi, was born. Standing there looking at his beautiful, little girl, Jesse Duplantis, the man who was always comfortable performing before audiences of thousands, found himself breathless. This is the first good thing I’ve ever done in my life, Jesse thought. “I couldn’t understand Jesse’s insistence that we have Jodi dedicated to God,” Cathy remembers. “God had no place in our lives, and besides that, I’d never even heard of dedicating a baby. As Catholics, we baptized babies, but Jesse was insistent that we dedicate her to God. “It was years before I understood that Jesse realized he was headed down a road of certain death. Since he knew he wouldn’t be around to help her, he wanted to find some way to give Jodi a chance in life.” A year and a half later, while Jesse was doing a show in Minneapolis, Cathy was watching television in her hotel room when she came across a man named Billy Graham. The words he spoke about a God who loved the world so much He gave His Son, pierced her heart. At the close of the message, Cathy bowed her head and invited Jesus into her heart. BVOV : 19

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